The Balfour Declaration, Britain’s promise to create a Jewish home in what is now Israel, turns 100 this week — and its legacy is as divisive as ever.
From street protests to celebratory dinners, the centenary of the 67-word document is being marked in starkly different ways in Britain.
“It’s so divisive even today because Zionists think that the Balfour Declaration laid the foundation stone for modern Israel — and they’re right to think that — and by the same token non-Jewish Palestinians and Arabs see it as the foundation stone of their dispossession and misery,” Jonathan Schneer, a historian who authored a book on the document, told the Associated Press (AP).
Prime Minister Theresa May and her government “ought to hang their heads in shame” for the treatment of Palestinians since the Balfour Declaration was signed 100 years ago, leading scholar Avi Shlaim said last week. While May has promised to mark the occasion “with pride,” Shlaim joined a chorus of scholars who have lambasted Britain’s record on Palestine since Arthur Balfour penned his famous letter in 1917.
“I angrily reject Theresa May’s claim that Britain should mark this anniversary with pride. There is nothing to be proud of,” said Shlaim, an emeritus fellow at St. Anthony’s College, Oxford, during a discussion marking the Balfour centenary held at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) University in London.
“British policy toward Palestine was crooked in 1917 and it remains utterly crooked today,” he added.
Shlaim was joined by Gilbert Achcar, the chair of the Centre for Palestine Studies at SOAS, who highlighted the failure of the British government to uphold the Balfour Declaration in its entirety.
The succinct missive says that the British government supports the creation of a “national home for the Jewish people… it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.”
Achcar, however, criticized the “abysmal record of the British government in keeping with these two provisos.”
Oxford Prof. Karma Nablusi, who also spoke at the discussion, insisted that the effects of the Balfour Declaration are felt every day by Palestinians.
“It’s a tangible reality for us today and the impact that we see in the practices of colonialism, foreign occupation and apartheid,” she told the audience